Inline Photos and Copyright

Moved from a hidden discussion page. It is an important issue and I never knew what is SL policy regarding this matter. Thereby I made dozens of those links myself. Please continue with the discussion.

Can giving the address information of these links

• http://gobase.org/games/pic/ki000013.gif
• http://gobase.org/information/players/?pp=Yamabe%20Toshiro

be a breach of copyright?

• i) just giving the alphanumerical information
  • i-1) adding brackets and therewith establishing a link (would this be a so-called "deep link"?)
  • i-ii) the objected information was given full credit (the link was visibly stating gobase.org) and rather short (4 sentences). However, shortness is relative as it was 50-90% of the information on Gobase.

Does anyone have sound legal information (not just ad-hoc, instant-dogmatic layman opinions, as we all have) on "deep linking" w.r.t. copyright? K-F Lenz for example?

Velobici: Why not ask Jan van der Steen, the owner of GoBase his wishes. If he allows deep linking, the legal issue is moot. If he requests that Sensei's Library does not have deep links to his site, should we ignore his wishes? Again the legal issue may be moot.

Bill: It appears that Gobase uses the same photo as the Nihon Kiin. I doubt if the Nihon Kiin would mind if we inlined the photo.

John F. Jan got permission from the Nihon Ki-in, the same as we (GoGoD) did. They impose conditions (e.g. acknowledgement, copies of publications). From our discussions with them, I believe they would mind doing anything without their prior permission, although once usage is explained to them they are, as ever, very helpful. The Kansai Ki-in is much more strict, and it took us several months to get permission. It was even discussed at board level. I can't imagine that the Nihon Ki-in would take direct action, except in egregious cases, but abuses do alter their views on westerners and this tempers how much effort they put into proselytising in the west. One of the most insidious ways of upsetting people is to take them for granted.

For example, I was told that the Koreans were upset that some foreign assocations did not send their best players, as requested, to the Prime Minister Cup (these foreign associations unilaterally preferring to spread the freebies around among their members). This was apparently instrumental in winner U Dong-ha not being allowed to become pro as he would have done (and had dreamed of) if it had been a "real" world championship. It may also affect the nature of future invitations (e.g only the European champion being invited). There's always more to things than meets the eye. Why cause offence gratuitously?

Interjection by Steve: Just to clarify on this point, without in any way trying to damage John's point. The president of our national Go organization and one of the contact rep's of the KABA were in contact on this matter unofficially, and the KABA rep indicated that they were happy with our point system approach for selecting representatives. He pointed out that the aim of the tournament was popularising Go world-wide, not necessarily running the strongest tournament. Admittedly, the Hankuk Ki-won not making U Dong-ha a professional, is a disappointment, though.

A major point that is being overlooked in this debate about inlining is the question of **control**, not just money. We talk loosely about copyright but there are (legal) moral rights as well. These were prominent, for example, when authors refused permission for their work to be sold in apartheid South Africa. If you, by inlining, use someone's photo on a page, for example, endorsing some product or some nasty practice whereas it was used innocuously on the original page, you are in danger of causing quite a bit of offence and damage. If it's a photograph of a person, that person may have only given permission for it to be used in a certain way (this is allowed if the picture is taken in a private place). Using it elsewhere, you may be upsetting more than the photographer or agency - the subjects, parents, teachers, professional organisations. And for what?

Bill: Thank you, John. You raise some important considerations.

BTW, did you check the minor edit box, either originally or when making a later (minor) edit? Recent Changes did not show your response. I just happened upon it.

Tapir: To restart the discussion: Is there a SL policy regarding inline photos? Should there be one? If there will be a policy, can we get permissions from photo providers (that is nihonkiin, kansaikiin etc.)?

Herman: Getting permission from Nihon/Kansai Ki-in might be a good idea. I've listed some other sources below

Tapir: Is the assumption correct, that inlined pictures need not to be OCL (which is the SL copyright) since they are only shown while not SL content (as e.g. the problems posted here)?

Sources

Wikimedia commons

On Wikimedia commons, there are a few basic licences in use, these are:

• Public domain: Free to use, no restrictions
• GFDL: Free to use, but must be made clear that image is GFDL and any derivative works must also be GFDL.
• CC-BY: Creative Commons Attribution. Free to use, but credit the author
• CC-BY-SA: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike. Free to use, derivative works must also be CC-BY-SA.
• Fair use: Do not reuse. Commons claiming fair use does not mean we can too.

This means that reusing works from Commons is generally allowed, and it is best to:

• Credit the author & source
• Mention the license

For this, you can use the author & license field in the picture template:

For example: {{picture|url|author=John Doe|license=CC-BY=SA|align=right}}

Nihon Ki-in

Kansai Ki-in

We use pictures from both on several pages.